


I Can't Help But Fall Apart

by C0c0plumb (cocoplumb)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Child Abuse, Fake-Abuse, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Nightmares, Physical Abuse, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-28
Updated: 2012-02-28
Packaged: 2017-11-03 03:03:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/376398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cocoplumb/pseuds/C0c0plumb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn’t John, not really. He wouldn’t ever lay a hand on either of his sons. Sam knew that, he really and truly did. But it doesn’t stop him from flinching every time his father came near.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can't Help But Fall Apart

**Author's Note:**

> Re-Upload from LJ.

__

  
The pain consumed him. Though not from the blows of ten knuckles pounding into his face mercifully. But from the heart inside his chest, breaking each time he looked up at his father and begged him to stop. And each time John didn’t. 

Blood pooled in his mouth and dripped over his chin as he sobbed. A tooth that was loose severed from his gum entirely after another strike. His nose had cracked and dislodged a while back. Back when Sam still knew what day it was. He no longer had the strength to hold his head up, no longer could bring himself to cry out and push back. He took the punches without a fight, he blinked up at his father’s blurred face and saw the hate in his eyes, and he took every bit of all he deserved.

The guilt swallowed him, suffocated him, it was killing him.

“S’rry d’d,” Sam breathed, he didn’t want his last words to be a plea to spare his life. He wanted to make sure his father knew just how sorry he was.

“Oh Jesus Christ…Sammy, Sammy, oh god. Oh god, you’re gonna be okay champ, you’re gonna be okay.

The last thing Sam felt before he let go was his father’s faint kiss on his forehead. 

 

* * *

  
   
Sam’s breath hitched as he woke, confused until he heard the familiar low rumbling of the car under him. It helped lull him carefully back into consciousness and he pulled his head from the window glass and rubbed his eyes free from sleep

“Hey, Sammy, how’d you sleep?” John asked from the driver’s seat. He did that a lot now, asking Sam how he slept, asking him how his day was, asking him if he was okay.

“Good,” Sam lied easily, ignoring the pair of eyes studying his expression from the mirror.

He looked out into the scenery, resting his head once again on the window, enjoying the cool glass against his temple. It helped with the headaches he got frequently now. The doctors had said it was a possibility because of the likely brain damage he’d suffered just three months ago. But preparing for it didn’t make it suck any less.

“You okay, tiger?” John asked him, just like clockwork. Overcompensating far too much.

“M’fine,” Sam said. He wasn’t much of a talker these days. The doctors warned about that too, personality changes. Though Sam knew this particular development wasn’t down to the physical consequences of his bashed in skull.

“Dean, get him his pills from the glove box,” John muttered quietly and Sam rolled his eyes. As if I can’t hear you.

“I don’t need any. I’m fine, guys,” Sam insisted.

They carried on as if he’d never spoken. Dean grabbed a bottle of water from under his feet and shook out two white pills, turning around in his seat, waiting until Sam huffed and leant forward to accept them. “Thanks,” he said, miserably but sincerely none the less.

After he swallowed them, and both his father and brother watched him do so, John spoke up again in that lightly gruff and careful tone he’d perfected. “Next decent motel we see, we’ll stop for the night.” It was unnatural, Sam thought to himself. His father didn’t speak that soft, never had, as he got older, the gravel in the back of his throat only got stronger. Since he’d learned the gravel hurt Sam’s head, John had perked up his voice until it hurt him.

“We don’t have t-”

“Sam, we’re stopping,” his father said, stopping him mid protest.

Sam ducked his head. “Yessir,” he said without fault. He heard John sigh from the front seat and saw Dean rub his forehead.

“Sammy…” John tried, but it was his turn to be cut off.

“Sorry. It’s fine. We’ll stop. Thanks,” Sam rushed. What the thanks was for he didn’t quite know.

Thirty minutes later they pulled into some unnamed back road and found a motel with open vacancies. John went to the office to book a room, came back not two minutes later with a set of keys and drove around the corner to park in front of room fifteen.

Sam opened the door and swung his legs out onto the graveled ground. He pushed himself up using the door handle and wavered when he got to his feet.

“Whoa,” John said, grabbing a hold of Sam’s elbow instinctively to steady him.

Sam pulled back like his father’s hand was burned with coals. He cowered for a moment, his body stiff and pained until Dean came around the car and slipped a hand around his back, giving John a weak smile and saying, “It’s okay, dad, I got him.”

Sam looked up in time to see the flash of hurt in his dad’s eyes and the disappointment straining his mouth and the guilt rushed in the young man.

Though believe it or not, the flinching and jumping was an improvement for Sam. It wasn’t all that long ago when he would whimper like a wounded animal whenever John even came within a foot from him and Sam would well up with fear and cry, “Don’t touch me.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam offered to his father before the hurt was promptly blinked away.

“Don’t, Sam, don’t.” John sighed and ran a hand over his face. “Don’t be sorry about that. It’s not your fault,” he mumbled distractedly.

Technically speaking it was Sam’s fault. It was Sam who the creature decided to haunt. It was Sam’s mind it stole into. One of Sam’s stupid split second thoughts it read and brought to life. Sam who got the shit beaten out of him by a ridiculous hallucination that he was convinced at the time was his real father. Sam who wasn’t strong enough to know the difference between reality and evil, even now.

“You boys get inside, I’ll grab the bags.”

Dean had Sam in the room before he could even try to suggest another apology to their father.

Sam took his usual bed furthest from the door, when John and all their bags were inside the room, Sam excused himself for the bathroom.

“Sam,” Dean tried, but didn’t look like he knew what else to say besides his brother’s name.

“I just wanna take a shower.” Sam even went to the effort of grabbing a clean pair of boxers and sweats. Though all three of them knew Sam wouldn’t be taking a shower. Sure, he’d use up all the hot water, but only to drown out the sounds of his quiet tears. Locking himself in the bathroom, sitting on a closed toilet seat with his knees pulled up to his chest and crying into his kneecaps had become a regular past time of Sam’s.

“Don’t be too long in there, okay kiddo?” Translation, don’t sit in the dark crying too hard and too long that you pass out against the bathroom tiles again.

“Okay, I’ll save you some water.” Sam shrugged, moving to the bathroom and locking the door behind him. He checked only three times it was really locked, down from his usual five or six checks. Satisfied, Sam dumped his clean clothes on the side of the sink, switched on the shower, cold so he wouldn’t waste the water his father and Dean would need, but high so the sound of the spray was louder and stood a better chance at drowning him out.

He felt his eyes fill and his lashes dampen before he’d even sat down. He lowered himself to the toilet seat, his head resting on the dingy chilled tiles, and the first sob broke free without effort.

His chest hiccupped and he turned to check where his father had put his hand on him to stop him from eating gravel not five minutes ago. There was no mark, his father’s fingers had barely brushed him, so he didn’t know what he was expecting. A large purpling mark, sore and tender maybe? Or a deep imprinted gash from his dad’s wedding ring?

Sam pressed himself into the wall and cried harder. He picked up the sweats from the sink and pressed them to his face to muffle his choked sobs.

Three months and two days exactly since the hunt was done, the monster killed and Sam was saved, and it still wasn’t over. Sam was beginning to think it never would be.

The End.


End file.
